Hackney Village Fayre 2016

HACKNEY VILLAGE FAYRE – SATURDAY 23 JULY

A FEAST OF LOCAL FOOD, DRINK AND FUN FOR ALL THE FAMILY

Hoxton Square will provide the leafy setting, for the second year running, for the Hackney Village Fayre, on Saturday 23rd July from midday to 6pm, held in aid of Magic Breakfast charity.

A superb selection of food, catering for all tastes, will be provided by local restaurants 8 Hoxton Square, MEATmission, Il Cudega, Hill & Szrok, Dishoom, Foxlow and Smokey Tails. Come and try a Dead Hippie Slider, Bhel, Pizza, or a Lamb Tomahawk! Wash it down with a tasty brew from Biercraft, a cocktail from Happiness Forgets, or a coffee from Nude Espresso perhaps.

There will be fete-style games of skill including Splat the Rat and Beat the Goalie, plus a coconut shy and Tombola. Participating restaurants will be donating special raffle prizes.

Tokens will be purchased on entering the Fayre and this will be the payment method for each stall and activity. Each token is worth £1, with food and drink items ranging from £3 to £7.

All proceeds from Hackney Village Fayre will go to Magic Breakfast to provide healthy breakfasts to schoolchildren who would otherwise be too hungry to learn.

Magic Breakfast is a national charity that started in Hackney 15 years ago after its founder, Carmel McConnell, spoke to five primary school headteachers in the borough who all told her the same story, that pupils were arriving at school without having eaten – sometimes having had nothing since their school dinner the day before. With no fuel inside them, children were finding it difficult to concentrate in their core morning lessons and were missing out on key nutrients they needed to grow into healthy adults. Today Magic Breakfast has 25 partner schools in Hackney, 185 in London as a whole and 480 nationally, providing nutritious breakfasts to over 23,500 children each school day.

There are 4 schools in Hackney on the charity’s waiting list who have requested urgent food aid. Magic Breakfast invites fundraising help to make sure there is no child in Hackney starting the day with hunger as a barrier to their education. https://www.magicbreakfast.com/appeal/magic-breakfast

· Magic Breakfast is a registered charity (number: 1102510) providing healthy breakfasts to over 23,500 UK children every school day 9,000 of whom are in London.

· The charity works with schools where over 35% of children are eligible for Free School Meals, or with 50% Ever 6 FSM, helping them to establish breakfast provision that targets every hungry child. A hungry child cannot concentrate and will miss out on the most important lessons, taught in the morning, if not given anything to eat.

· There are more than 480 Magic Breakfast partner schools – primary, secondary, SEN schools and Pupil Referral Units in England (185 of which are in London) plus over 300 schools on a waiting list (53 in London).

· Each “magic” breakfast, of cereal, porridge, bagels and fresh fruit juice, costs the charity just 22p thanks to the generosity of the charity’s food and funding partners.

· Magic Breakfast was the sole winner, in 2014, of the Department for Education’s Lot 3 tender to set up new breakfast clubs in 184 schools in areas of social deprivation. The funding ended in March 2016.

· At least half a million children in the UK go to school hungry. The goal of Magic Breakfast is to ensure that, by 2020, there are no children in the UK starting lessons too hungry to learn.

Hoxton Square is in the London Borough of Hackney, N1 6NU. According to Hackney Council it is one of London's earliest garden squares, details of which can be traced back to 1709. It was originally created as a central garden space to accompany a new housing development on what had previously been fields. The nearest Underground and Overground station to Hoxton Square is Old Street.

Magic Breakfast's head office is in London (our office space is kindly lent to us by Pearson), but our School Partners are located all over England and Scotland so they can be close to the schools they work with.

Magic Breakfast not only provides food aid to schools, but has an expert team to help identify and reach every hungry pupil, offer nutrition advice and training, give parents nutrition and food hygiene training, and advise on post-breakfast activities such as book clubs and exercise sessions.

Magic Breakfast was founded by Carmel McConnell, MBE, in 2003, but she started buying and delivering breakfasts to five schools in the London borough of Hackney three years previously after hearing from headteachers there that many of their pupils couldn't concentrate until they had had their lunch as they were too hungry.